Understanding Indian Superstition and its Diversity

India hosts many different races and religions that contribute to the country`s cultural diversity. To understand the depth of cultural differences in India, we need to continually assess and understand the demographic and religious factors that can reflect such differences. Currently, however the field does not have proper measurements for such endeavors. Accordingly, our goal is to develop measurements that can assess such differences. One such important cultural difference is superstition. Superstition is an important factor of Indian culture, as it is a cultural heuristic we can use to interpret both persons and situations (Carlson, Mowen, & Fang, 2009). There is a superstition measure available, however it is based on western culture (Tobacyk, 2004; Carlson, Mowen, & Fang, 2009). Thus, we gathered information among Indian locals, and used it to derive Indian-focused items for a new measure. We tested the measure with various religious and demographic groups at a university that consists of a diverse socio and economic population, as well as the different regions of India where they are from. We recruited 127 participants (men = 67; women = 60), and we assessed the types of superstitions that they considered relevant to Indian culture. Results suggest is not only important to understand the diversity of Indian culture (which holds the second largest population in the world) when creating such measures, but this can also guide us to understand Indian culture better. The purpose of the current project is to develop a scale for assessing a cultural aspect of India, and we believe that the measurement is successful in reflecting the cultural value of the country. India is a vastly understudied country, and this can help us to understand the country and its culture in a scientific matter. We report psychometrics of the scale, and further implications are discussed.